Karin and the Other Uzumaki
by Lucillia
Summary: When Karin tries to call a certain someone out for using a certain family name shortly before the beginning of the first phase of the Chunin Exams, she gets a bit of a surprise, as we all know that he's the real thing.
1. First Phase Cancelled

Karin sat in the room in which the first phase of the Chunin Exams was to take place, unable to believe her luck. She had been on one of the teams that had been selected by Orochimaru-sama to take part in the Exams. As she waited for the Exams to start, she idly watched as Konoha's rookies walked in with the boy Orochimaru-sama was targeting.

All of a sudden, the blond in orange who was on the Uchiha's team started claiming to be an Uzumaki.

That was too much. She who was amongst the last of the Uzumaki, who had all of her family die on her, wouldn't let this little liar claim to be a member of that great clan, and therefore family. It was clear as the hair on the brat's head that he wasn't an Uzumaki. All Uzumaki were red-heads. It was a trait that was strangely dominant in all Uzumaki/non-Uzumaki pairings despite the fact that red hair was usually recessive. If the brat wanted to claim to belong to one of the Great Clans, he may as well claim to be a Uchiha, as that claim had equal chances of being true, meaning none at all.

She wouldn't sit still for this.

"LIAR!" she yelled, catching the attention of the entire room as she stormed towards the boy, prepared to kill him for his insult. "I will not let a little blond loudmouthed shrimp like you sully my clan's name by claiming it for your own!"

It was at that point in which Uchiha Sasuke, who if he'd kept his mouth shut and saved her from a bear in the forest later in the Exam would have earned her undying love and gratitude, put his foot in his mouth and earned something else entirely.

"You mean there's an entire _CLAN _of you morons? !" Sasuke yelled.

As Karin stood there looking back and forth between the false Uzumaki and the Uchiha trying to decide which one to kill first the proctors appeared.

"Settle down!" the lead proctor barked. Unfortunately, the entire room which had been stirred up by the claim of name theft, wasn't in the mood to settle since there was most likely going to be a killing soon. Name theft was one of the lowest acts one could commit in the Shinobi world, and clans tended to deal harshly with those who tried to use their name when they weren't entitled to it.

"I said settle down!" the lead proctor roared.

"Internal clan matters take precedent to all others within the village walls. It's in the founding charter." Hyuuga Neji spoke up.

"Yes. And, that means that the members of said clan can get the hell out of here!" the lead proctor said, before turning and throwing out as an afterthought. "Their teams too."

"Great going Naruto. If you hadn't tried to show off we'd be taking the Exam right now." Uchiha Sasuke snarled at his teammate as the team from Konoha and the second Sound team filed out of the room grumbling over the actions of their respective teammates.

As Karin was gearing up to fight and kill the blonde fake on the lawn of Konoha's Ninja Academy, the Copy nin Hatake Kakashi arrived, presumably to have a word with his students who had just been thrown out of the Exam.

"What's going on here?" the Hatake asked as he took in the impending duel.

"The red-haired girl here is claiming that Naruto committed an act of name theft." the pink haired female on the fake and the Uchiha's team said, looking as if she wouldn't put it past the fake.

"Oh, who was he claiming to be related to?" the Hatake asked, looking at the fake sternly.

"My clan!" she roared as she lunged towards the boy only to be restrained by the Hatake. "There's no way in hell that this blonde shrimp is an Uzumaki!"

"There's unimpeachable proof of Naruto's lineage going back several generations." the Hatake said coldly. "What proof do you offer for your claim that you are Uzumaki?"

"But, but, he's blond. No Uzumaki are blonde." she said weakly as the Hatake loosened his grip on her upon realizing the fight had just gone out of her.

"His father's genes turned out to be more dominant in some areas. He's got the Habanero's personality though, much to my regret." the Hatake said as he released her.

She ended up sitting down hard when he did. She had family.

She had family.

As she sat there dumbly staring off into space as the realization sank in as well as the realization that she and what could possibly be her only living relative were soon to be on opposite sides of the war, the blonde who had a round face that she realized was similar to some of her long-dead relatives walked up to her, studying her with a strange intensity.

"I have family." the boy whispered almost in awe.

"So, are you like a cousin or something?" the boy asked as he sat down next to her, oblivious to the fact of exactly how far the results of their outbursts had derailed Orochimaru-sama's plans.

&!&!&!&!&

**Author's Note: **this story was written at the request of Requiem the Relentless. Hopefully, it is as good as he or she expected.


	2. Speaking of the Uzumaki

**Author's Note: By popular request, this will be going from a oneshot to a story.**

Naruto had sat on the lawn outside the Academy talking to Karin until the sun set completely ignoring her team who had wandered off to go play in the trees or something, and had treated her to a bowl of ramen at Ichiraku's when they'd both grown hungry upon realizing that they'd missed both lunch and dinner. When Naruto had told Teuchi about Karin being related to him, the man said something about her looking a bit like his mother before paling and rapidly clamming up. After several minutes of prying, Teuchi had looked at him sadly and said "I'm sorry Naruto, but your parents somehow got included in that law. I think it was to keep the people who didn't know who they were from bad-mouthing them for having you in front of you, but..." before clamming up once more, probably because he wasn't supposed to mention the law in question.

"You mean that Kakashi-sensei could get in trouble for talking about them?" Naruto asked, horrified by the prospect that his sensei could get hurt or maybe even killed for saying as much as he had.

He now knew that his mother was named Habanero, but at what price had that information come?

Not being in the mood for any more ramen, he left his third bowl half finished as he paid for his and Karin's meal, idly noting that she'd eaten just as much as him. He then walked Karin home, or back to the inn she was staying at before heading over to the Hokage Tower. Hokage or not, The Old Man wasn't going to hurt Kakashi-sensei or Teuchi-san for saying something about his parents...

&!&!&!&

Karin smiled as her blond cousin walked her back to her lodgings in the visitor's area of Konoha, or rather hurried her back before he headed off to take care of some important business that presumably had something to do with the law that the Ramen Stand owner had mentioned. Even though she knew that she didn't deserve it for ruining Orochimaru-sama's plans regarding the Uchiha jerk, she would beg him for her to be allowed to keep her cousin when he destroyed Konoha. Naruto was the only family she had left.

When she got to her room, it was to find Orochimaru-sama waiting for her.

"Do you have any idea what you've done you stupid girl?" Orochimaru asked in that dangerously cool voice he used when he was beyond pissed.

"I'm sorry Orochimaru-sama, I couldn't control myself!" she said as she got down on her knees and begged forgiveness. While Orochimaru-sama hated displays of weakness, he paradoxically also liked seeing people grovel before him.

"It's my fault." Orochimaru-sama said. "It's my fault for taking in someone who was like Kushi-" he broke off shuddering "She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

She relaxed slightly at this.

"That doesn't mean that you won't be punished though." Orochimaru-sama said.

"Will you be using a whip?" she asked. She deserved to be whipped or worse for her transgression.

Inexplicably, Orochimaru-sama rapidly paled even further than his already unnaturally pale normal skin tone which she hadn't believed to be possible, and ran from the room as if the hounds of hell were chasing him.

&!&!&!&!&

"Back so soon?" Haruno Sakura's mother asked as her daughter came into the house looking completely dejected.

"Naruto ruined everything." Sakura cried.

"What did that little monster do?" Mrs. Haruno asked her daughter as she grabbed a box Sakura's favorite sweets in order to comfort the girl.

"Naruto started yelling crap to look like a tough guy, and some redhead girl from that new village Otogakure didn't believe he was an Uzumaki and tried starting a fight, and we all got kicked out!" Sakura wailed.

"I knew that brat couldn't possibly be an Uzumaki!" Mrs. Haruno yelled almost victoriously. She now had the scoop of the year. The sins of the lady down the street were nothing compared to this!

"He is." Sakura said. "Kakashi-sensei said so. He said that there was proof of Naruto's lineage going back generations."

"But, why hasn't anyone...? Oh, dear..." Mrs. Haruno said, looking as if she was suddenly lost in her own little world. "He does look like him, and I remember overhearing my mother saying...Oh, dear..."

"What is it mother?" Sakura asked.

"Oh, long before you were born, there were rumors of a scandal involving the Honorable Grandson, the first Honorable Grandson, Senju Nawaki not Sarutobi Konohomaru, and a girl that was two years older than him. They were hushed up after the poor boy died on one of his first missions since at the age of twelve he was obviously too young and it would be shameful to drag the poor boy's name through mud after he had died for Konoha, but I wonder if they hadn't been silenced too soon." Mrs. Haruno said.

"Yes, yes, that would be about right. He of course would have been a bit young, no older than twenty, but it does fit. The Senju genes were just about the only thing in nature that could dominate the Uzumaki red. Tsunade and Nawaki's father was proof of that. No wonder they kept it a secret, a scandal like that..." Mrs. Haruno muttered to herself as she wandered off into her own world where she was preparing the ultimate bit of gossip about a certain Uzumaki child. She'd have all of her neighbors eating out of her hand by the end of the week.

To think that the Shodai Hokage's great-great-grandson was on her daughter's team...


	3. Gossip Gone Wrong

Naruto ended up reaching his apartment at midnight that night. He had been kept at the Hokage tower for several hours after he'd went to tell the old man not to hurt Kakashi-sensei. Apparently, someone had decided to put his sensei on trial then and there, and he had been forced to answer a number of questions about how his sensei treated him, several of which were rather awkward and had implications he didn't even want to consider.

Who the hell would accuse Kakashi-sensei of doing **THAT**?!

Sure, the man had spilled the beans on his parents when he wasn't supposed to, neglected his training in favor of teaching Sasuke at times, showed up several hours late to said training, severely cutting into their training time, and read porn in front of them, but he had never did **THAT**, and especially not to him.

How **THAT** had somehow crept into the charges and accusations that had been leveled against his sensei, he didn't even want to know.

Despite the exciting day he'd had, or probably because of it, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow.

&!&!&!&!&

Shortly after sunrise, though she didn't need anything in particular, Sakura's mother set out to do some early morning shopping. What she'd actually intended was to get some early morning gossip in in the marketplace while the incident from the Chunin Exams was fresh in people's minds. The Uchiha's disqualification had undoubtedly made the rounds by now. As she moved towards one of the produce stalls that were still being set up, she heard the outraged whispers about the Uzumaki boy that were her cue.

"Actually, it was the foreign girl's fault." Sakura's mother said. In a choice between sticking it to the Demon or sticking it to a foreigner, the foreigner won out. The Demon was a native of Konoha - sort of - and Konoha could do no wrong, especially when there were foreigners about.

"How do you figure that?" one of the women down the street whom she absolutely despised asked snidely.

"I got the story out of my daughter last night." she replied sweetly. "Apparently, the...Uzumaki boy had been trying to intimidate the other participants in the Exam in hopes of giving himself and his team a better chance of success, and the foreign girl called his lineage into question."

"Well, considering the fact that no-one actually knows..." one of the other women in the group started.

"It's less a case of no-one knows, and more of a case of it being so scandalous that it had to be hidden dear." she said with a satisfied smile on her face that called to mind metaphors about cats, canaries, and the consumption thereof. "My daughter heard her teacher say that there is proof of the boy's lineage going back generations. The only reason it would be hidden would be if..."

"If what?" one of the younger women who had only recently been allowed into the circle after her marriage asked eagerly.

"Think about it, whose line was the only one known to have actually drowned out the Uzumaki red? Who managed to produce a brunet son, and a dark blonde granddaughter and grandson?" she asked, noting with glee that she had everyone wrapped around her finger.

"But, someone would have noticed long ago if Tsunade came up pregnant, and any child she would have had would have had either white, black, dark brown, or blue hair." one of the other women replied.

"I'm sure one of you will remember that old rumor I remember my mother speaking about when I was a little girl." she said, getting a subtle dig in at one of the older members of the group she was gossiping with on this fine morning. "The one that got rather hastily buried after the poor boy died."

"You mean that nasty lie about Nawaki and that little slut that Iwa was trying to spread?" one of the women hissed.

Based on the looks that comment got, she was in very dangerous territory, and she was tap dancing on the edge. If she didn't move carefully, she could be pushed over and shunned, or worse. It was fortunate for her and the sake of the truth that the Demon bore a bit of a resemblance to Nawaki, a resemblance that some members of the group would undoubtedly try to wave away as part of their shared Uzumaki heritage.

"Come now, I told you it would be scandalous." she said in a false light tone. "You have to admit it makes sense, any child Nawaki would have had would have been about twenty around the time that the Uzumaki was born, which is more than old enough to father a child, and the Uzumaki does bear something of a resemblance to the Shodai Hokage's grandson."

The other women, a couple of whom were Kunoichi and a few more who were retired Kunoichi, all put up a stony front, but she could see the considering looks in their eyes. It could take a couple of minutes before she found out whether or not she'd just fatally overstepped her bounds, or provided the best item of gossip in years.

In another world, Mrs. Haruno's bit of gossip would be the talk of the town, at least amongst bored housewives and anyone else who bothered to listen to them. In this one however, different trains of thought had run through the minds of a number of her listeners, and her words had fallen flat. Instead of excited listeners closing in eager to hear more about her theory about the Uzumaki's lineage, she had gotten a number of scowls before her usual circle collectively turned their backs on her.

Realizing that staying in the marketplace afterward could be dangerous, since a number of the women in her gossip circle were Kunoichi, Kunoichi who wouldn't appreciate the "slandering" of the grandson of the First Hokage, she started to move away. She was stopped by a call from a nearby stall that sold watermelons. Turning, she saw the red-haired proprietor waving her over.

"Yes?" she said when she made her way over to the stand, warily watching the other women who had made up her social circle whose disapproving eyes were following her.

"Is it really true that the blond, Naruto is Uzumaki?" asked the owner of the watermelon stand who was a middle-aged man who looked like he could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, who in another world didn't pay attention or bother to ask the proprietor of the neighboring stall what the locals were gossiping about because the situation didn't look like it had turned potentially deadly for one of the group.

"My daughter told me that her sensei had informed her that there is proof of Naruto's lineage going back generations, and that the boy was indeed an Uzumaki on his mother's side." she carefully replied, leaving off any embellishment.

The man paused to think for about a minute. As he did so, a dangerous glint entered his grey eyes, and his fists started to clench and unclench. Almost afraid for her life, she started to back away a bit.

"That BASTARD!" the man said as he whirled around and put his fist through the wall of the building that was located behind his stand.

A moment later, the man seemed to have calmed down when he'd abruptly started packing his produce back into the cart he'd brought it into the village on.

"Many apologies to my customers, but my family will not be doing business with Konoha again." the man said rather loudly when a Chunin arrived a minute later to buy a watermelon from him only to be turned away empty-handed.

"Why not?" the Chunin asked as a young red-haired woman started taking down her nearby pottery stall.

"Considering the fact that you leave your allies in the lurch, wouldn't know the truth if it bit you all in the ass, and are perfectly willing to steal our children if you think you can get away with it, the only thing I can trust you to do would be to try to cheat us out of the fruits of our labor as well." the man said as he continued to pack up his stall.

The crowd that had gathered around as the man had turned the Chunin away was stunned, confused, and angry by the accusations that the man with the coastal accent had made.

"Why would you accuse us of such things?" one of the women in the crowd asked challengingly.

The man who was moments away from death, and probably knew it paused in his packing, reached for something that was around his neck that had been hidden by his shirt and threw it at the woman. All of the ninja in the crowd jumped away as the object flew through the air, and drew weapons as they did so. They ended up calming down a bit when the metallic object that the man had thrown had done nothing more than to hit the woman and fall onto the ground where it lay there and continue to do nothing.

After another minute or so of continued inactivity, a Jounin bravely and cautiously made her way over to the object which looked like it was a neclace with a rather odd looking pendant on it. She carefully touched it with the toe of her sandal, and it continued to do nothing. Slowly and cautiously, she picked it up and started to examine it.

"What is it?" one of the members of the crowd that had backed to a reasonably safe distance asked.

"Dogtags." the woman who was reading said dogtags replied.

"Where from?" another person asked, glaring at the foreign ninja who had dared enter Konoha in the guise of a civilian and make wild accusations against them.

"Uzushiogakure." the woman and the man who had run the watermelon stand without any problems aside from the occasional prank from Naruto for the last decade said at the same time.


	4. The Price of Dishonesty

To understand why the Uzumaki who had been selling their wares in the Konoha marketplace were so shocked and upset to learn that Naruto was an Uzumaki, one would have to go back several years to around the time Naruto was six or so.

Before Naruto had stopped crying and started making a nuisance of himself, he had been completely under the radar of the Uzumaki merchants as the last of a long line of caretakers had been the one to get Naruto's food and other supplies before he was left to his own devices. When he started the Academy when he was six, it was decided that he was old enough to care for himself after his caretaker had falsely claimed that Naruto was an independent and self-sufficient little boy who was already fully capable of cooking and tending to his apartment. It was then that Naruto began appearing in the marketplace and catching the notice of certain stallkeepers who came to sell their wares a few times a year when they were in season.

The man who had adopted the position of spokesperson for the Uzumaki survivors who had mainly been those who had been outside Uzu during its fall had taken particular note of the boy who had introduced himself as "Uzumaki Naruto", and decided to ask the Hokage about him with a mind to finding the boy's closest relatives and informing them that there was another surviving member of their family. When he asked the Hokage, the man had told him point blank that the boy was not actually an Uzumaki, and that he'd been named in honor of Kushina after one of the rescue workers who'd found him after the Kyuubi attack had noticed that he had Kushina's sunny personality. The man told the Hokage that the orphan could wear the symbol of Uzushogakure like all Konoha ninja did, but he couldn't wear the Uzumaki clan symbol, informed the other Uzumaki that he had connections to of what the Hokage told him and considered the matter closed after that.

Sure, some of the Uzumaki had had their suspicions afterward when they noted the boy's bone structure and the odd verbal tic that cropped up in the clan occasionally which the boy possessed, but they had been silenced after they were informed that the boy had Senju blood which was common amongst the Uzumaki as well as the general Konoha populace. The bright blond hair and bright blue eyes weren't Uzumaki traits after all, and since the boy possessed them, it was more likely that he would have been a Konoha Senju rather than an Uzumaki with Senju blood, as most of those had at least some red in their hair.

After having had their suspicions in regards to Naruto's lineage put to rest for years, hearing that the boy whom they'd allowed the locals to snub, shun, and toss out of their shops and stalls right in front of them was indeed an Uzumaki and that they'd been lied to by the Hokage who had sworn to uphold the alliance between their clan and the village even after their village was gone was a nasty shock. For one former ninja who had retired to grow watermelons following the destruction of his village because he couldn't bring himself to serve another, even Uzushiogakure's eternal ally, discovering that his family had been lied to about a boy who could have been surrounded by kin if they'd but known, this shock brought forth a number of other suspicions that had been brewing quietly in the back of his mind for a couple decades. Konoha still stood, and Uzu had fallen after all.

Though he probably should have kept himself silent about those suspicions until he was outside the village and had a chance to consult with other members of his clan, the impetuous nature that was common amongst the men of his clan - himself included - had led him to air his grievances out in the open despite the risks of doing so. In those moments that Uzumaki Mita had courted death by flinging his old dogtags into a hostile and edgy crowd, he hadn't cared what would happen to him or his younger cousin Rei. All he cared about was the fact that he and his had been betrayed, and he wanted everyone to know it.

When a child who had remained in the markeplace, a child who should have been halfway through his schooling, asked where Uzushiogakure was, it further served to add fuel to the fire...

While a man who was many years out of practice flung himself on ninja who had been his allies moments before, his cousin Rei fled the marketplace leaving her wares behind. She didn't flee out of cowardice, but to alert the clan to what she saw as Konoha's treachery instead.

While Uzumaki Mita was making a final stand that would go down in history and legend in the marketplace, Uzumaki Naruto - who was unaware of what was going on - was getting ready for the day, munching on his usual egg, toast, and milk that was a bit off before getting dressed. Since he'd been given the day off by his sensei who'd gotten off by the skin of his teeth because he'd never actually said his parents' names and used his mother's old nickname when speaking of her and had never done **That **to him despite what some people seemed to think for some strange reason, he had no particular plans for that day. He intended to visit his cousin whom he'd met yesterday, and water his plants, but aside from that, nothing.

As he dressed and made his way out the door, a rumor about him spread through the village like wildfire, and it wasn't the one that Sakura's mother intended to spread. This rumor spread not through the adults, but through the children, most of whom were hearing of Uzushiogakure for the first time. As the rumor spread it grew greater and more fantastic with each retelling, especially after an enterprising Academy student had confirmed the existence of the former village during a trip to the library.

By the time Naruto had brought Karin to his apartment to show her his plants after a day of hanging out and talking and playing games Karin hadn't had a chance to play in a long time and Naruto hadn't had a chance to play in...ever, most of the children in Konoha were convinced that Naruto was the son of the melon seller who had died in the confrontation in the marketplace after leveling said marketplace, and that the man had been the ruler of Uzushiogakure. The truth of the matter was of course both more and less spectacular at the same time, as the man in the marketplace had merely been a second cousin twice removed who'd been looking forward to a life as a career Chunin prior to Uzu's fall, and Naruto's parents were much more important.

By the time that Karin was returning to the inn to find her stuff at the door and a note from Orochimaru that basically stated that things weren't working out between them and that she'd likely be happier elsewhere, parents from all over Konoha were hiding frowns and other looks of displeasure and dismay from their faces as their children regaled them with the stories they'd heard that day. As far as they were concerned, the Uzumaki name was mud thanks to the number of ninja who had lost their lives that day.

&!&!&!&!&

In the Hokage's office, a certain old man was feeling as if he'd had his nose brutally rubbed into yet another one of his mistakes as he signed yet another condolence letter that would be little to no comfort to those whose family members wouldn't be coming home that evening despite the fact that they should have been safe within the walls of their own village. Had he not lied to the Uzumaki survivors when they'd come asking because they would have had every right to take Naruto thanks to the agreement he'd signed when Kushina had arrived in Konoha, this would not have happened. Lie to them he had however, and fifteen Jounin and twenty-seven Chunin and three Genin had been the price he had paid. That of course was only the initial cost, since the potter had managed to get out of the village.

Word of this incident could not be contained and was already spreading far and wide, and Konoha was being painted as the villain in this matter, and there was little he could do to fix that because Konoha had indeed been in the wrong in this incidence. The best they could do would be to hunker down until it blew over and do as much damage control as they could.

Even worse than the loss of face and forces for the village however was that based on the reports he'd received, Naruto - who had been an innocent in this matter - would likely be paying a price for this as well. Many would not see that as worse and instead see it as Naruto getting what he deserved for causing this problem, but the ninja had known what they were in for when they'd signed up, and Naruto's only crime in this matter had been to be born.

If he'd known what the cost of lying to the Uzumaki would be, he would have told them the truth and begged that Konoha be allowed to keep him instead.


End file.
